This week has brought and will bring multiple "firsts' with it. Many people, including myself, have seen their first robins of the spring and we all know what that means! My SO and I took our morning perambulation outside - our first since probably early November of last year. There was no sidewalk or street ice to be found so we had no worries about slip-slidin' away (Thank you, Paul Simon!) and I'm certain that the treadmill appreciated the day of rest.
Early this coming Sunday morning, the government will pull its annual "tinkering-with-Mother-Nature stunt", otherwise know as Daylight Savings Time. This event is a now-annual rite of spring that I wish we could do away with. It simply messes up everyone's internal clock, which is naturally almost messed up anyway.
As humans, our internal "clock" is known, in scientific circles, as our "circadian" clock, sometimes referred to as circadian rhythm. For those of us who have difficulty sleeping, we know that circadian rhythm is about as difficult to regulate and keep constant as the Catholic rhythm method of birth control. Humans' sleep patterns can be disrupted by many influences, light having one of the highest incidences of influence. The word "circadian" comes from two Latin words - circa, which means about and dies (pronounced dee-ayse), which means day. What I did not know is that our naturally occurring circadian clock is set on a roughly twenty-five-hour-a-day clock and that, to keep with the earth's observed twenty-four-hour-a-day clock, our circadian clock must reset itself on a daily basis. It is no wonder that many people suffer from nightly sleep disruption! So, when our government, with its great wisdom about what is best for the masses, arbitrarily chose to observe a twice-a-year chronological switch, it must have come from a back-room discussion among mad scientists and even more insane social scientists who thought it would be fun to mess up peoples' sleep patterns and then observe the resulting mayhem.
Consequently, I am posing a not-rhetorical question: Do you, the reader, know of anyone - I repeat, anyone - who likes the time changes? I do not believe I've ever heard one single person who has publicly stated that he or she "can't wait for the time change". We complain about our politicians regarding multiple perceived "offenses", but, I ask, how many greater offenses can there be than messing with Mother Nature and natural biology? I maintain that we are all part of some giant and subversive scientific experiment, like rats in a laboratory. Somewhere, people in white coats are watching and laughing and I'll bet they do not observe twice-yearly time changes.
A conspiracy? Maybe. Or, maybe I've just seen too many reruns of "Bones".
Ancora imparo
